Irish Planning Analysed

The Clare Champion reported during the week that Councillor PJ Kelly who, having pointed out to a council planner that a refusal on a planning application had been issued by mistake, claimed the planner responded to him by saying that the Council didn’t have to give ‘f_g planning permission to anyone, we can tell them all to f off to An Bord Pleanala’. PJ told the Champion that he thought the planner in question had an attitude problem. But the Council’s Director of Planning Services, Bernadette Kinsella (mentioned previously in Dispatches in relation to the most odd affair of the proposed purchase of a hotel in Kilrush for the purposes of creating the least cost effective council offices since someone went somewhere for Fás or whatever) told the paper that she supported her planning staff.

More seriously, the same article reported that on a different planning application, an applicant had been asked (in peculiar circumstances) to post a bond. When the same Councillor Kelly offered – on a point of principle – to post the bond on the applicant’s behalf the Council refused to accept his proposal. So either the Council isn’t really that concerned about whether a bond is posted or not (in which case, what have the Council got against the applicant), or else they’ve concerns about Councillor Kelly’s own finances.